


I am left whole

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbrey angsts while she and Petyr have a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am left whole

“He couldn’t even do me the honor of bringing back my husband’s bones.” Her words were grim but her tone was mocking, wry, and her mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. “But he did bring back his horse.”

Petyr raised an eyebrow. “Probably a broken-down old nag.”

Barbrey laughed. “No, come to think of it, it was one of father’s better destriers, but all the same, such a consolation prize.”

“Stark was always a fool,” Lord Baelish replies, sipping his wine, his eyes merry but beneath that, he was inscrutable as always.

She could laugh about it now, with the security of years between it and her, but the insult still pained Barbrey, deep down, in a place that she’d long since cloistered within herself, held sacred and separate from those who would use it to undo her. They must never suspect that she’d had a heart, and that part of her, even now, still did. Too many were gone, too many had withered, grown crooked, disappointed and thwarted her, ruined it all, and now she would have a life beyond that agony.

Part of her even cares for Petyr in a way, because he too had suffered disappointment. He too knows what it is to be cast aside, and the sere humiliation that follows. But she realizes that she is only a piece, a fragment in a larger tapestry that he hopes to weave, and while what they’ve shared over the late Lord and Lady of the Vale’s wine cellars and what they’ve done behind locked doors and in darkened rooms has given her pleasure, she will not allow him to know just how much she comprehends, or just how much she could care, were she to allow herself that luxury.

There is danger in such weakness. It had undone her when Brandon Stark had grinned at her, his hands on her thigh under the table, her father unsuspecting at the head, her sister and her queer husband on her right, more concerned with maintaining their own facade than Barbrey’s curious expression as his fingers slid up her leg and worked to undo her.

Even then she did not break.

Not for sweet-faced Willam, who had tried, and who had been able to make her smile, and even laugh sometimes, a pleasant distraction until he’d died in the red waste.

Not for her nephew and his bloody death, the only fragment of decency from her sister’s profane union.

Not for what she saw at Winterfell, the stunted heir and his weeping bride.

And she wouldn’t break for this man, or his fraudulent daughter, or the things that they whispered when they believed themselves to be alone, heads pressed together.

Not for any of this.

When he refills her cup, his hand brushes hers. She resists the urge to shudder, and smiles.


End file.
